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Saturday, January 15, 2011

Aircel Phones Take Dictation Of Facebook Status Updates

India’s mobile service provider Aircel has debuted the first ever voice-activated service for updating one’s status on Facebook.Right now only Aircel customers can use Facebook Voice Updates, but the social network might forge similar partnerships with other cellular service providers, according to Wireless Federation.Aircel subscribers can use the service by dialing 51555 and then speaking the status update into the handset. The system transcribes the recording into text that posts on the caller’s Facebook profile.If you’ve ever tried using dictation software, you’ll appreciate my wondering how accurately Aircel’s service can render audio recordings into text. It’s no small feat, and even the best voice recognition systems make mistakes. It’s one thing to have typos or other mishaps show up on content you’re using privately, but posting glitches publicly might be humiliating.Unfortunately we don’t reside in Aircel’s service area so we won’t get to test drive voice-activated status updates until a local carrier makes one available. But we’d love to hear from readers who’ve tried out the spoken-word mobile application for Facebook — please share your experiences with us in the comments section.And even if you haven’t used a voice-activated mobile status update tool yet, perhaps you could offer an opinion about what it might be like, or whether you think your own cellular service provider will offer such a service soon.